Yeah, you are right, we should all only have sellable careers because the world and the U.S. doesn't need to learn any history. Maybe you figure we'll be better automatons if we all have tech majors?

That said, she's a dolt, but not because she studied Medieval history.

Well, that and it is so tidy that they are attempting to get NASA out of the sort of science that tells the Republicans they have shit for brains.

Yep, and Rand is really stand up guy. He didn't want to go through the opthamologists boards in Kentucky, so he created his own board and self-certified under that. He's also claimed he has a biology degree, which he doesn't. He does have a medical degree from Duke, though, maybe he got them confused. He's also been caught plagiarizing wikipedia.

Yep, agile strikes me as shoot from the hip design philosophy. Have something complicated to produce? Produce a small bit of it, then add to that, then add to that, then refactor (if possible), then add to that, etc...until you have reached Massive Dirty Snowball. Now stop screwing around (for the "stakeholders"), throw it out, and design something quickly...but continue to have sprints, daily meetings, reflection meetings, meetings with managers, etc...until you are getting nothing done. Now stop, take a deep breath. Shoot the "stakeholders", and get proper teams set up, get a proper design, get proper coordination, and tell the scrum leader to shove it.

Republicans scare me as well, but so too do the Democrats. Who thought turning over even more health care to the insurance companies was a good idea? They're the slimeballs who screwed it up in the first place. And try to get Democrats to understand the problem we'll have paying for all entitlements when they come due. They look at you like you are from Mars, claiming, by the way, the SS trust fund has x dollars in it. Really? The SS trust fund is merely an accounting device. The Democrats actually do think there is a giant mattress stuffed with x dollars hidden away somewhere. They do not understand, and have no way of understanding, that it will come out the hides of working people at the time it comes due. No amount of flim-flam accounting is going to change that.

Democrats also believe in the Biden Foreign Policy of acting like a scared rabbit because then the rest of the world will like us. The world order is somehow going to be preserved from the likes of China and Putin all by itself, that the militarily self-decommissioned Europe won't be cowed by a resurgent USSR that Putin is putting back together. See the Estonians for how much this vision excites them. They somehow believe the trade the U.S. does will not change with a Chinese and Russian centered world, or that the Islamists will be satisfied only fighting among themselves. They believe in the bunny world Biden has promised them and Obama believes he is delivering.

As an American, most European countries look quite indistinguishable. What's your point? Distance makes things hard to see?

Blessed with Great Age, this totally disconnectedness from reality for the Republican Party started under Ronald Reagan. Then the Party progressed until they were totally disconnected from Ronald Reagan. In the future, we expect them to be so other that no one will be able to vote for them because they will be totally disconnected from the U.S. political landscape. Think of them as a really far out there Grunge Movement.

No he's correct, James Inhofe, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, stepped outside of his house in Oklahoma and observed, get this, snow. He was able to conclude on the basis of this observation that there was no global warming and certainly no human induce global warming.

He was also able to observe no decrease in the Ogallala aquafier level so Oklahoma will have water until the End-O-Times. And he was able to observe that the Moon has kept a steady distance from the Earth in his lifetime, so it will be there until the End-O-Times (scientists dispute this saying it moves away about 1.5 inches a year). And that he could see no relationship between the Great Apes and Man, so there is no evolution, and it has been this way since the Beginning-O-Times.

You should be proud to have such a scholar as head the Senate Committee.

Hmmm...CO2 and Methane are greenhouse gases. Pump lots of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Watch temperature increase. Reference: see Venus. Let's know how the trip went.

You misunderstand Erdogan and his government. They are ISIS sympathizers, as are the clerics in his chorus. He's perfectly potty with killing off a bunch of Alawites in Syria because they aren't Sunni, being much closer to Shi'ites. Erdogan is a whore, and his government is interested in nothing except turning the country into a theocracy from which its religious affliction will never be uprooted.

Yes, but poll numbers show Muslims think Jihad in the name of Islam is perfectly potty, just as long as it isn't Muslims getting whacked. Also, Muslims believe political power comes from Allah, most Western (and Christian, I might add) nations believe political power comes from the people. As long as Muslims indulge themselves in this belief of Allah and political power, they will have no problem killing off non-Muslims, and they will never assimilate into Western nations. They will, instead, look at Western nations as nations not yet taken over.

And the Muslim saying, "if Allah wills it" shows just how morally bankrupt they are. They will never lift themselves above dictatorships or dictatorships masquerading as theocracies. And don't bother pointing at Indonesia as a counterpoint, they periodically have pogroms targeting non-Muslims.

Christianity and Judaism were reformed. Islam admits no reform...well, it does but the reformers are soon pushing up daisies. There are still a few nutjob Christians and Jews around, but they are a small minority.

Bullshit. Most men back then just wanted to live their lives without any grandiose delusions of conquering everyone just so they could tell them what to do and make people think their dicks were bigger. Mohammed was no different except for the late stage schizophrenia and using religion as a way for political control. Christ didn't arise in a vacuum, yet Mohammed decided fucking up people was better than being nice to them.

Much of silicon valley is/was devoted to the transistor. Now that innovation has been assimilated into products and there's not all that much more you can do to the transistor to make it more useful to drive new products, it isn't surprising to see silicon valley slow down. Why would anyone expect innovation to crank on at a steady pace? Everything goes though cycles, innovation is no different?

In addition, scientific breakthroughs are what drives real innovation. Seeing this, Congress has seen fit to cut research spending as have companies. It is the revenge of the bean counters who were never good at science. Scientific breakthroughs are not consistent even with consistent research funding. It took 10s of years to for quantum theory to influence modern electronics. Gravitation theory took 10s of years to influence GPS systems. The cut-off in research funding will eventually result in us just rearranging the technological deck chairs, there won't be new science to draw upon.

There is also the effect of low hanging techno-fruit. It's been plucked over fairly well. Transportation is a good example. Short of developing transporter beams, the jump from the 19th century to the 20th was immense. That's unlikely to continue. Other industries are similar. We got very, very good at what we do with what we have. Even the Wall Street Journal had an article this weekend on how the world is awash in just about everything...oil, minerals, workforce, etc. We're very efficient at producing stuff, so efficient we don't know what to do with it all.

Hmm...you mean Apple wants into that arena to make money? Those bastards!